SOCIAL SELF

• Social..Me to refer to the parts of self-knowledge that are derived from social relationships.
• Major source of self-understanding is ourselves.
• Self-concept refers to our understanding of who we are, what we can do, how we feel about ourselves, and how others see us.
• Admonition to “know thyself” seems to imply that self-knowledge can be acquired through introspection.
• People do indeed focus their attention on themselves in a deliberate attempt to enhance self-understanding.
• Introspection the process of observing the operations of one's own mind.
• Reflecting a widespread assumption that each person is the best expert on himself or herself.
• Self-schemas represent people’s beliefs and feelings about themselves, both in general and in particular kinds of situations
• Self-knowledge is stored in memory in cognitive structures known as self-schemas.
• Each of us has a self-schema representing our beliefs and feelings about how conscientious (or not) we are.
• A  person who views himself as very high (or low) in conscientiousness is likely to include more (or fewer) instances of past conscientious behavior.
• Aschematic is the people who rated themselves moderately on the independent-dependent dimension.
• Schematic is the people who are in the dimension of dependence.
• Social-situation shapes the nature of the self.
• Attitudes and behaviors are socially appropriate from parents, siblings, teachers, peers, and other socialization agents.
• Socialization agents can also shape our sense of self.
• “Looking-glass-self,” by Charles.Cooley, refers to the idea that other people’s reactions to us serve as a mirror of sorts
• Self-knowledge is derived in part from reflected self-appraisals, our beliefs about others’ reactions to us.
• We internalize how we think others perceive us, not necessarily how they actually see us.
• Situationism refers to our social self shifts dramatically from one situation to another.
• Working Self-concept to refer to the idea that only a subset of a person’s vast pool of self-knowledge is brought to mind in any given context—usually the subset that’s most relevant or appropriate in the current situation.
• Distinctiveness hypothesis refers to highlighting what makes us unique in a given social situation
• Several paths of reconciliation

  • The working self-concept varies across situations,
  • Person’s overall pool of self-knowledge remains relatively stable over time
  • Person’s sense of self may shift depending on the context, it’s likely that these shifts conform to a predictable, stable pattern.
• Social-self is defined by two truths: it is malleable, shifting from one context to another, and at the same time a person’s social self has core components that persist across contexts.
• Analects of the Chinese philosopher Confucius have shaped the lives of billions of people.
• Declaration of Independence prioritized the rights and freedoms of the individual, and it protected those rights and liberties from infringement by others.
• It’s important for people to assert their uniqueness and independence, and the focus is on internal causes of behavior.
• Independent and Interdependent Self-Construals Cultures that promote an independent self-construal
• Interdependent self-construals, the self is fundamentally connected to other people
• Independent self-construal promotes an inward focus on the self. While, interdependent self-construal encourages an outward focus on the social situation.
• Independent self-construal represents the tendency of individuals to define themselves by their unique configuration of internal attributes.
• Women describe themselves, they are more likely than men to refer to social characteristics and relationships
• Men tend to be more focused on personal traits and accomplishments
• Socialization processes are one influential source.
• Gender differences in the social self may have originated in human evolutionary history.
• Social-Comparison is sometimes people actively seek out information about themselves through comparison with other people.
• Social-Compaison-Theory is that when people have no objective standard by which to evaluate their traits or abilities, they do so largely by comparing themselves with others.
• To get an accurate sense of how good you are at something, you must compare yourself with people who have roughly your level of skill.
• Upward comparison occurs when people compare themselves to someone they perceive to be superior 
• Downward.comparison is defined by making a comparison with someone perceived to be inferior.